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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "U" Is For Ulster

Exile concept art by Joshua Gabriel Timbrook

When I was writing the Strange Stars Fate Rulebook, I had conversations with setting creator Trey Causey about how technology worked in his setting. One of the things he shared is that spacecraft have smartmatter barriers that you can pass through to leave the ship. When you pass through, it wraps a smartmatter spacesuit around you.

The concept reminded me a bit of the skinhugging Ulsters, a setting-defining spacesuit worn in Mark Rein-Hagen's Exile RPG setting.

I am going to use Ulsters in the next Strange Stars game I run.

Two drafts of Exile were published before White Wolf discontinued work on the project. Exile was hands-down the most epic space opera setting that has ever been created. It promised to revolutionize SF gaming the same way that Exalted did fantasy.

I am sharing two excerpts from the first and second drafts to share the concept of Ulster.

Content below the first triple asterisk is from the first draft of Exile.

Content below the second triple asterisk is from the second draft. Where a table was deleted I added a [snip].

No challenge to the image rights or authorship is intended.

I hope this excerpt gives readers a sense of what might have been possible with this game.

***The text in the ulster section should caress the images
of people in Ulsters, wrapping in interesting ways around the photographic
forms of Exiles. The figures are posed in a combination of anatomical
illustrationesque positioning and fetish catalog style. They are impervious to
the deadly environments that surround them: the surface of a starship, near the
Trinary Suns, on an mine asteroid, in Nullspace. Microtext points out features
and items of interest.***

The Only Thing Between You
and the Void

Your Ulster is your friend. There is nothing, nothing at all
more important that it when you are in space. Your priorities are: 1. Breathing
and 2. Know Thy Ulster.

What follows is some extremely useful advice about your
second skin. Your Skin2 lets you keep your warm wet animalness alive pretty
much anywhere, and it has an infinite number of clever functions as well. The
Skin2 is literally that: it coats you like a layer of paint. A flexible, extremely tough paint that
recycles your waste, blocks cosmic radiation, super thermo-insulates against
heat and cold, performs basic first aid should you need it, and can play host
to an endlessly diverse number of accessories from strength-boosting
exo-skeletons to built-in entertainment systems, to weapon holsters and
mounts. (Don’t let an Artifex find out
what that plasma-thrower hardpoint is for though -- they’ll ‘fix’ it trying to
look after your best interests.)

A flap projecting from the nape of the neck may now be
stretched over to enclose the head if desired.

Note that additional attachments and lodes can be introduced
and the Ulster will detect and interface with them automatically.

Removing the Skin2 is a bit more difficult.

First, detach any Lodes and extras. The Ulster will go flaccid and stretchy.

Start with your face and stretch the neck opening until you
can fit a shoulder through it.

Get the arm out of that side and proceed to stretch the
material around the opposite shoulder.

Slip the rest off down the torso and legs and you’re
out. Usually takes three or four minutes.

###

<<<There are as many different kinds of Ulsters as
there are those wearing them (the basic ship manifest type is barely
functional, but with money and connections you might get your body in a Skin2
with more advanced functions), so we’ll be a bit general. First off, the Artifex make Ulsters, and if
you ever have one that’s damaged or lose the one you have just ask a tinker or
higher grade T-Fex and generally they’ll fix you up. They know (as you should too) that a human
without a working Ulster is a dead human.
Luckily whatever little voices they listen to inside their heads makes
sure they help out anyone in Ulster-trouble.
They won’t upgrade the Skin2 unless they’re loyal to you and even then
you need to know what to tell them to do.>>>

[snip]

Known ulsters are apparently composed of a mixture of four
substances, whose different proportions affect the way a lode can modify and
enhance its functions. Lodes configure the various substances dynamically to
actualize enhancements. For instance, the Military type/mix has a diamond-like
sheen to it, seeming to lend itself to toughness and structure-based
applications. Furthermore, Ulster material is made of hundreds of layers of
micro-woven materials, forming shielding layers, transport layers, actuator
layers, et cetera. An Ulster can do
pretty much anything because its structure is mutable, stretchable, and can
serve as a medium for stuff like Lodes and Machina to communicate through.

You need to have a Consortium techie make these
modifications, or have an owned Tinker fiddle with it under your direction, but
here are some more ways an Ulster can be modified:

generate breathable air by itself

coats you inside and out (through your digestive,
respiratory, and reproductive tract)

monitors your hormonal and endocrine chemistry and alters it
as you wish

has self-renewing maneuvering jets

forms storage vacuoles for liquids and solids

animate its form on the fly for theatrical and camouflage
purposes

form tentacles or tails or even extra limbs

generate and stores electrical power from solar cells or
ionosphere wires

act as its own telemetry send/receive antenna

work with a Signet lode as its all-around sensorium recorder

automatically perform surgery and medical functions

You can see how the versatility of an Ulster is limited only
by the imagination (and skill) of the wearer.
And the degree to which the lodes’ mandates are broken that you’re
installing.

<<<Another important note: take it off. It’s rare that one gets the opportunity to be
out of your Ulster. I know we say you
gotta have it on and it’s the most important thing, but when you’re safe you
should take it off. For one thing, sex
is much better in just your original skin, unlike the fun but essentially
impersonal Ulster-shielded couplings that pass for most sex in the Grange. Risk of infection and the element of trust
involved makes it a whole new thing... you’ll like it. Oh, and then there’s the stories you hear
about belt miners who wear their Skin2s for years and years: I saw with my own eyes when one took off her
Ulster and her REAL skin came off with it
-- just sloughed off and she didn’t feel a thing ‘till her nerve endings
hit the air! Seems the Ulster bonds to
your epidermis after a time. Consider
yourself warned.

On a lighter note, be creative with how you wear your
Skin2. Nothing marks you more as a green
Exile than a plain Ulster. Paint it,
wear clothing over it, attach blinking lights to it, morph it into a unique
drape, cut, and shape -- express yourself, baba. This is the Grange and you should revel in
your newfound freedom!>>>

About Me

Last and First Men

"In your day you have learnt to calculate something of the magnitudes of space and time. But to grasp my theme in its true proportions, it is necessary to do more than calculate. It is necessary to brood upon these magnitudes, to draw out the mind toward them, to feel the littleness of your here and now, and of the moment of civilization you call history." - Olaf Stapledon